I once owned a Facebook account. I “deleted” it to the extent I could force Facebook to, and they fought me all the way. Ultimately, it wasn’t actually much. They still have all the data from the account, they just don’t use it for anything other than selling me to companies, I suppose.

However, as a non-Facebook user now, I can tell you that there is a significant and palpable gulf between Facebook users and non-Facebook users. I show up in several pictures taken by friends and posted on Facebook. I am not tagged – it would have to be a raw tag anyway, so I cannot be searched through any function. I’m hardly even discussed on Facebook, judging from my friends’ account usage. It’s two different worlds, and I’m glad I’m not on the Facebook side of it.

Oh let me add some fuel to the fire. There’s a nice little security hole, last I heard, where you don’t even have to be friends with someone to see their feeds. Simply ‘add as friend’ and that does the trick. They don’t even have to respond and you’ll start getting their feed.

Yeah….have become rather disappointed with FB. I’m slowly winding down anything I have stored on there, regardless if it’s cached or not.

It’s a sad world when people only want to keep in touch with you on FB only.

-No kidding. I had to make a very quick/emergency trip through my old hometown. I called one friend, and they got in touch with a few more and we met for lunch. One of them just had to tweet about it. (Seriously, adults). Within 30 minutes of being back on the road, I had an unhappy call from others about why I didn’t let them know. The connected world can be a bit much.

I don’t pretend my information is impossible to find, but I’m still very fond of services like ixquick, the https service wikipedia offers, etc. Every little bit helps.

You can get pretty hardcore about it and own your house, bank account and other property in separate legal entities (trusts and LLCs), and this gives you a measure of privacy that is above and beyond what most tinfoil hats would even consider. Still not at a point where you can act smug about it, but you can be reasonably well-protected.

I think it’s more of an anti-authoritarian thing than anything actually, since even the more practical paranoids I know tend to scoff at the idea of using the legal system to improve their privacy.

(For the record: the typical formula is houses or rental property in trusts, cars in LLCs with nominee directors. It’s the most practical way, but it’s still expensive, and still a bitch.)